• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Entertaining the Movement: Jane Fonda, GI Resistance, and the FTA By Lindsay Evan Goss B.A., Macalester College, 2004 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre and Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2014 © Copyright 2014 by Lindsay E. Goss This dissertation by Lindsay E. Goss is accepted in its present form by the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date ______________ _____________________________ Patricia Ybarra, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date ______________ _____________________________ Patricia Ybarra, Reader Date ______________ _____________________________ Nicholas Ridout, Reader Date ______________ _____________________________ Rebecca Schneider, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date ______________ _____________________________ Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii CURRICULUM VITAE Lindsay Goss was born in Florence, South Carolina in 1982. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors in English Literature at Macalester College in 2004. During college, Lindsay began directing and performing with a number of theatre companies in Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2005, she moved to New York City (staying until 2008) where she worked as a literary intern with the New York Theatre Workshop, as a teaching artist at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, and as a waitress at a series of unremarkable establishments. Her article “Class/Work: The Strange Labor of the Student Activist” will be published in a special of Contemporary Theatre Review in Winter 2014. She has presented conference papers at the annual meetings of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Performance Studies International, and the American Society for Theatre Research. While enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Theatre and Performance Studies at Brown University, Lindsay co- coordinated Living Labor, a two-day conference on life, labor, and art in the academy, and organized a one-day conference on the Persian Shahnahmeh. From 2013 to 2014 she served as one of four graduate student representatives on the Graduate School’s Graduate Council. During her time at Brown, Lindsay has continued to direct and perform and has participated in developing a number of new works. She served as dramaturg on Jackie Sibblies Mo’Reece and the Girls, for the Writing is Live festival in 2010. With Andrew Starner, she co-created and performed Scenes From Scenes From a Marriage during an artists’ residency at 95Empire in Providence in 2013. Also in 2013, she co-created and performed The State Department presents with Nicholas Ridout, in support of which they received a Creative Arts Council grant. Over the past six years, Lindsay has taught multiple courses, including Persuasive Communication, The Politics of Performance, and Controversy in Context, a theatre history survey for acting students through the Brown/Trinity Repertory Theatre Consortium. Each summer since 2009, she has taught Writing for Performance: Sketch Comedy. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It goes without saying that I cannot possibly express all the many thanks that are due those who have helped me reach this point. First and foremost, I cannot imagine three more supportive, creative, thoughtful, rigorous, or collaborative scholars than those that generously served on my committee. As my adviser, Patricia Ybarra has been tireless in her support, encouragement, and guidance (however tiring this may have been), not only on this particular project, but throughout my graduate experience. Her careful reading of countless drafts, her incisive feedback and targeted suggestions of where to look and which path to follow, and her willingness to help me think through the stakes and implications of my work have made this project what it is. In the process, Patricia has modeled for me ways of being in the academic world, amidst its many contradictions: she is strategically resistant, both impatiently and patiently radical, open with her students and colleagues, and rigorously engaged in the field. Rebecca Schneider, through her research and her teaching, has introduced me to ever-new ways of approaching theatre and performance. The pleasure that is apparent in her writing is one with which I am happy to say I have been infected, and when I have encountered difficult moments in my work, I have been heartened by imagining what sort of conversation I might get to have with Rebecca about the questions I’ve found and that I am attempting to answer. And then I get to have those conversations. I have benefited from these sorts of conversations with Nicholas Ridout, as well, who managed to v show up at Brown at just the right time to bring everything into focus. His is the writing against which I measure my own, and the ideas that are contained within this present project owe more than a little to the work he has done. I had not imagined that one could write about the politics of theatre in a manner at once so theoretically rigorous and also so nuanced, subtle, and joyful. I am also inspired by the way Nick carries his intellectual interests over into a playful yet sincere approach to theatre-making, and I consider myself exceptionally luck to be able to count him as a collaborator on that front. Throughout the research process, I have been dependent upon the kindness of strangers—and what kindness it has been. Michael Alaimo, Nina Serrano, Barbara Dane, Country Joe McDonald, and Rita Martinson all opened their homes and personal archives to me. On more than one occasion, I arrived to discover that my impending visit had prompted a search for long lost files, and I can only hope my hosts took as much pleasure as I did from pouring over the clippings and scripts in their living rooms. Jane Fonda, too, gave me her time and attention, and I am grateful to her for her willingness to revisit the past with this curious graduate student who showed up on her doorstep full of nerves. Of the countless stories I heard during these many months, only a few have made it into what follows, but all of them have become integral to my understanding of the show and its significance. My thanks as well go to Bill Belmont, who kindly tolerated my presence in his office as I examined files he’d kindly brought from home, and to Holly Near, with whom I have not yet had the chance to meet, but who carefully and thoughtfully answered the not terribly short list of questions I sent to her. I was also and especially fortunate to spend time with Elaine Elinson, who turned out to be my most important source of archival material, and an equally important source of encouragement and enthusiasm. I appreciated (really!) her cautious response to my initial vi inquiries—she wanted to make sure I had good intentions before providing me with the stacks of letters and itineraries she’d held onto over the years. Fortunately I passed the test, and it is now hard for me to imagine how I would’ve proceeded without her help. David Zeiger, too, invited me into his home and provided whatever he could in terms of archival material. I am grateful for his candor and for the many connections he provided to others involved in the show. Paul Lauter gave me several unrushed and engaging hours of his time last fall, answering all my questions, letting me rifle through his filing cabinets, and generally being a lovely person to talk to. My research may have taken months longer were it not for the scholarly generosity of Derek Seidman, who dropped into my lap a stack of photocopied articles he had collected on the FTA during the course of producing his own dissertation on the GI movement. Likewise, the research process would’ve been decidedly less pleasant and expedient without the support of friends in far-flung places, who made it possible for me to travel on a tight budget. In Oakland, Stephanie Schwartz and David Judd shared their home, their company, and their friendly cats. In Los Angeles, Peter Ellis, his wife Nanci, and their unbelievably fantastic kids, treated me as if they’d known me my whole life, from lending me their car to letting me tag along to the egg hunt on Easter Sunday. I also owe an intellectual debt to the many community and student activists I have worked with since 2006, as it has been my experiences in these contexts that have given rise to many of the questions I take up in this project. I want to thank in particular Paul Hubbard, who has been unflaggingly supportive, enthusiastic, and curious about my work, and who I consider an unmatched resource on the 1960s and ‘70s. I also am grateful to Bill Keach for providing a model of the activist academic, and for his thoughtful feedback on work from several years ago that has made its way into the present project. vii Turning to the more personal side of things, I want to thank especially those who have borne the brunt of my stress, anxiety, and panic during this process, though I take comfort in the fact that they know I would do (and have done, in some cases,) the same for them: Paige Sarlin is one of the smartest people I know, and I kind of can’t believe she has spent hours talking to me over the last few years about pretty much everything. She has responded to my distress calls, breakdowns, and life-altering decisions with love, patience, and long walks with Skaya. At every point in this process, she has given the most concise, eloquent, and actionable advice.

Load more

  266

Copy Link